Reader trust underpins the growth in newsbrands

10th February 2014

Reader trust underpins the growth in newsbrands

Latest Online Ratings from Nielsen show an increase in the number of people accessing newsbrand websites – nzherald.co.nz, stuff.co.nz and odt.co.nz with 22% more readers (unduplicated) engaging with these news brands over the latest period. Add to that those reading one of the many printed publications - daily, community or Sunday papers - and the reach of the country’s newspaper brands has grown to over 3.3 million people. Paid for newspapers remain the mainstay of industry’s stable of brands with 2.2 million readers every week, a number which remains strong.

These results clearly demonstrate the power of the sector’s brands to deliver to readers in a digital world; brands that seamlessly span multiple channels 24/7 providing news, comment and video content to a discerning population. Underpinning the success of this brand transformation is journalistic integrity and trust with many of the country’s newspaper brands having served New Zealand readers for generations.

This point was reinforced by a TNS study of n=747 media consumers in 2013 which found that newspapers and their digital entities provide a balanced, and in-depth view of the news compared to other media, and are considered to be trusted and reliable which carries over into the advertising messages delivered. The study also showed that consumers believe newspapers ads to be the least annoying and intrusive compared to other media, leading to less ‘filtering’ behaviour.

The relevance and connectedness of the local daily papers in regional New Zealand is evident with weekly readership of The Gisborne Herald, Hawkes Bay Today, Wanganui Chronicle, The Marlborough Express, Ashburton Guardian and Otago Daily Times either growing or maintaining readers in the past 12 months.

Readership of daily and Sunday newspapers has grown among affluent New Zealanders with 492,000 readers living in households earning over $120,000, an increase of 5,000 readers in the past year.

ENDS

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